This is protest music at its best. The tonal changes between unrestrained fury and celebratory cheer mirror the shifting emotions that strike the heart during those moments of despair when we rise up and shout ‘no.’ Time and again, the Angles 9 ensemble capture that with their new album Disappeared Behind the Sun. There’s how “Equality & Death (Mothers, Fathers, Where Are Ye?)” transitions between states of raw intensity and joyful enthusiasm and the way that “Ådror” has a martial cadence matched up with a fluttering melody. There’s also how “Pacemaker” moves like a Mardi Gras second line sent forward into the battlefield and also how the title-track enters a state of self-reflection even when the tempo spurs things on relentlessly and the song explodes into a thousand pieces. And wrapping up with “Love, Flee Thy House (In Breslau),” a piece that emphasizes the heartbreak of the blues in both a solitary and collective context, speaks to the meaning behind the album’s title.

There is a power in overcoming fear, surmounting despair, and fighting back. And there is a great relief, bordering on euphoria, of discovering you are not alone and that others, too, are rising up in opposition. It is a time when we are reminded of the best of humanity at the very same moment we are facing down the worst of it. Those conflicting emotions are also complementary, and the music of Angles 9 addresses it with an immediacy that strikes a mainline to the heart.